Demons 2/3

[nike_ravus]

Title: Demons (2/3)

Author: Alsike

Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss, some Emily/Pietro Maximoff

Rating: NC-17 – Not just for sex.  Warnings: War, violence, threat of rape.

Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds

Disclaimer: Not my girls.

Word Count: 5750

Summary: Part 2 of Emily is a spy in WWI story.  There is no actually historical accuracy intended in this.  I’ve had this part written for a while, but it needed editing, and I woke up this morning and realized that it was September and my semester-hell has started, and I had totally planned to finish this over the summer.  I have failed.  So instead of working on Old Irish, or Syntax, or Sanskrit, I edited this.  I hope it is, uh, coherent.

Part 1 

 

“Look,” Emma said.  The papers from the briefcase were spread out over her lap, the soldier’s pistol at her side.

The spy blinked once or twice.  It was probably possible to tell if she had memory loss based on what she did once she was fully awake.  Emma waited.  Her eyes focused on the papers, and in a jerk she was sitting up, searching for her derringer.  Her hair was a wild clumped mess from the half-assed job at cleaning it, and the silk blouse she wore was rumpled and gaping open, exposing the smooth curve of too perfect - too usable - tits.  Emma sat back, hand on her pistol, and waited for her to realize that she didn’t have a weapon, and she wasn’t in any place to protest about her briefcase being opened.

“Look,” Emma said again, more sharply this time, leaning forward slightly to spit the words.  The woman glared, hatred vivid in her eyes.  “I needed to know if I could trust you.  Sometimes one person has to take the first step, and you weren’t in any position to stop me from making it you.  So relax.  You said you’re an English spy,” she gestured to the papers.  “You’re a fucking English spy, congratulations.”

“You had no right-”

“I had every right.  You’re sleeping in the same room as my children.”

The spy’s eyes flicked away.  Emma followed her glance.  Rebecca was cowering away from the fight.  Jennifer was sorting through a meager pile of supplies, but looking over, looking worried.  “So what are you going to do with me?” The spy asked slowly, her voice half a growl.

Emma’s hands shook, but she didn’t look away.  This was stupid, but if this woman was right…  “Two things.  This is my home.  I’ve lived here for ten years.  I know the woods and mountains; I know the area.  And the front is less than two miles away.”  She shook her head.  “You could hear them, couldn’t you?”

Emily nodded.

“You made a stupid mistake coming here.  You can get across the border, fine, but you don’t get across no man’s land.”

“I was planning on heading north for a bit.  I wasn’t planning on getting caught and staying here.”  The spy cursed.  “I don’t have time for this.”

“I see that.”  Emma piled the papers up and started binding them together.  “Then I’ll take you tonight.”

The spy’s head shot up and her eyes widened.  “What?”

“If we can make it to the foothills, there’s a pass, it’s hidden, screened by forest.  I should be able to get you through.  But it runs close to the German outpost.  If I take you, as a soldier, we might not die if we get caught.  At least not right away.”  She didn’t think about what could happen before then.  If she did, she’d never step out of the catacomb.  She had survived it once.  Dying might be more merciful.

“You would do that?”

Emma shrugged.  “If you can end this, it’s worth it.”  She glanced over towards the alcove where Robert’s body lay.  “It’s worth it.”

 

xXx

 

It was a grey day.  The girl, Kitty, stood guard by the churchyard gates.  Kurt and the nun did most of the digging.  Emily offered to help, but Emma spat at her, telling her to rest her head and stop being an idiot.  She sat in the grass, next to Jennifer, who sponged clean Robert’s face and hands.  The littlest girl, Rebecca, watched curiously.

“Why is he so cold?”

“He’s dead, darling,” said Jennifer, hardly looking up from her scrubbing.  “He won’t go to God with dirt under his fingernails,” she had said firmly. 

Emily had been surprised, and then less surprised when she had heard Emma snort, a foot deep in the grave.  “Not that he ever had clean fingernails in his life.”

“Is he in heaven?” asked Rebecca.

“Of course.”

“Are there sandwiches in heaven?”

“All sorts.”

“Oh,” Rebecca looked concerned by this.  “Why does he get to go to heaven?  He always used to tease me.”

The dead boy was blond and lanky, but one leg looked mangled and infected.  Emily considered it.  They probably didn’t have the tools for amputation, though if Emily could imagine anyone amputating a child’s leg with only a butcher knife, it was that nun.

They were three feet into the grave now, Kurt pausing to rub his blistering palms.  He glanced over, meeting Emily’s gaze.

“I never liked him much,” he said in faintly accented French.  “But he was better after we pulled him out, less of a bully.  He used to say he wanted to be a soldier, but after… after the bombing, he said he wanted to be a priest.”

“He worried about his parents a lot,” added Jennifer.  “But I suppose God manages, even if the only burial you get is under a pile of brick.”

It had started to rain by the time Kurt and Emma finished digging.  There was no coffin.  They wrapped the boy in one of the black habits and Emma passed him down to Kurt who laid him gently in the hole.  Then he swung himself out.

Everyone stood as the rain kept falling, and waited.  But the nun didn’t begin.

Emily watched her.  Her face was vivid with brokenness.  She breathed, her chest moving heavily, as if she could hardly manage it.

Whatever sort of demon she was, she was only human with these children.

Emily moved closer to the grave.  She looked down at the black bundle on the dampening earth.  All that hard work scrubbing too…

“How long will you vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?”

Emma looked up, her eyes wide and suspicious.  But she nodded, slowly.

“Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.  God has barred my way so I cannot pass, and he has set darkness in my path.  He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.  He has destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope he has removed like a tree.”

She took a breath, and the children were watching her.  They were frowning mostly.  Translating it into French was hard enough; she had read it in English, so long ago, as literature, not religion.  She didn’t know the Latin.  Their French was good, but imperfect.  Kurt bent his head, his eyelids pressed to his cheeks, and his lips moving.  It looked like he was remembering the Latin as she spoke.

“He has kindled his wrath against us, and he counts us as his enemies. His troops come together, and rise up against us, and are encamped around about our home.  He has put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me.  My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.  All my inward friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved are turned against me.  My bone cleaves to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.”

And then, with the next few words, another voice joined hers, singing the Latin, as if this was the right passage.  As if there truly could be hope out of anger.

“Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God has touched me.”

“Miseremini mei, miseremini mei saltem vos, amici mei, quia manus Domini tetigit me.”

The rain softened, a dribble of mud running down into the grave, and the body sank into it, slipping away.

“Why do you persecute me thus, God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?”

“Quare persequimini me sicut Deus, et carnibus meis saturamini?”

The next words rang out clearly as Emily spoke them, but there was no beam of sunlight, no sudden peace, just the distant sound of gunfire.

“But I know that my redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.”

“Scio enim quod redemptor meus vivit, et in novissimo die de terra surrecturus sum.”

They waited, but Kitty made no cry of warning.  The gunfire died away.  Jennifer and Kurt picked up shovels and started filling in the hole.  Emily took Kurt’s shovel.  He had already dug the whole thing, he didn’t need to fill it as well.  The last of the grave was filling up.  The rain had stopped, but the sky was grey.

Emily fell silent.  She did not say the last of it, she could not.  But she could see in the slight nod from Kurt and the cold glance from Emma, that they knew what it was, and knew why she had not said it.

The voices died away, and there was silence, not the cry of a bird, not even the burst of distant gunfire.

 

 Be afraid of the sword: for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.

 

xXx

 

They risked a fire, Jennifer heating up a saucepan of dirty water, and all the children stripping off their wet clothes and wiping themselves with warm wet rags.  Emily helped dry the littlest one, getting her bundled into dry clothes once she was warm.

Rebecca sat in her lap and played with her hair.  “Tell me a story,” she commanded.  Emily closed her eyes, shaking her head slowly.

“I don’t know any stories.”

“You knew that story.  I didn’t understand it though.  Tell me a better one.”

“Rebecca,” Emma came over and lifted the girl off of Emily’s lap.  “Go and ask your sister for a story.  It will be easier to follow if it’s not in mediocre French.”

Emily glared at her.  “My French is not mediocre.”

The nun laughed and handed her a bowl of heated cabbage and catmeat stew.  It still looked vile.  “It’s very… Parisian.”

“So’s yours.”

“When I want it to be.”

Emma settled onto the stone with her own bowl and they sat in silence for a while.

“Job,” she said, finally.  Emily watched her and wondered if she should say that she only spoke the words she read in the nun’s face, in her hollow, broken sorrow.

“It seemed… relevant.”

Emma’s eyes were unexpectedly soft, and Emily felt guilty.  She had thought that perhaps this woman was worse than she was.  Her anger and the violence that ensued were too raw, too desperate, and the truth of her anger showed that she was pure in a way Emily could never be.  Emily didn’t need anger to be cruel; she didn’t need broken children, and burials where she couldn’t overcome her tears.  She was told to kill and she did it.  It made her sick to be around this woman.  Sick of herself.

 

xXx

 

“If I’m not back, you know what to do.”  Emma said, as she took Kurt’s shoulder.  He looked her in the eye, nodding carefully.  He was upset, but he was brave.  He had always been brave.  He had the rifle, and he would protect everyone.  “And if you need to run, just run.  I’ll find you.  I will not find you dead.”

Emma finished putting on her jacket.  The bloodstain was merely a dark shadow now.  Her belt, her cap.  The spy watched her.  “It’s not really a disguise, is it?  You are a soldier.”

Emma whirled on her.  How dare she say that?  “I am not.  There are no soldiers on my side!”

But Emily didn’t react to her anger, she just watched.  Emma looked down at herself, at her own dirty hands.  Perhaps she was right.  This world held nothing but sin and pain, and she was no different.  She would never be free of her own crimes.  But it wasn’t the same.  She shook her head.

“I’m no soldier,” she said.  “If I kill, it’s because I chose to.  I will never allow myself to be used to commit another’s sin.  My own are enough for me.”

The spy flinched at that, as well she should.  What was a spy but a hand without a heart?  The woman turned away, knotting her blood-soaked hair up into a neat cosmopolitan style.

 

xXx

 

The woods were dark, pitch black, and Emily followed the nun as she moved, brisk and surefooted, over the bumpy root-knotted path.  She could hear the gunfire in the distance, not far off.  Occasionally she thought she could hear a scream.  The path led through the foothills, at the bottom of the mountains, and she just tried to breathe, put one foot in front of the other, so close and yet so far away.

“Hey!”  A shout in German and the strong beam of a flashlight cut across the path.  Emily froze and Emma grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and shoved her to her knees.

“What do you want, fickers?” Emma snapped back in rough German.

The three soldiers came into view, and they peered at what seemed to be their fellow with a woman.

“Who’s that with you?”

“Found myself a whore,” the nun laughed.  “Maybe a spy too.”

“You’re late back from leave.”

Emma shoved Emily forward.  “I said I found myself a spy, Arschgeischt.”

The leader of the group looked surprised.  “You did?”  He stepped forward, catching Emily’s chin and jerking her head back.  “Give her to me.”

“You’re full of shit.  I’m handing her over the commander myself.”

The leader scowled and drew back.  He struck out, hitting Emma in the face, her head snapping to the side.  She spat out blood and then leapt to throttle him.  The other two soldiers went to pull them apart and Emily ran for it.

“Shit!  She’s getting away!”

Before she had gone twenty yards she was tackled.  She spat and bit and kicked, and they tied her up.

Emma was hissing, her face swelling up, and the leader gave the whole group a dirty look.  “Better get back to camp before you all fuck this up even more.”

The soldiers led them towards the camp, out of the woods and then down, into a dirty hollow.  The trench was an old one, not one of the ones right on the edge of no-man’s land, but it had been once, and it stunk of feces and blood and rot.  The sandbags that had once held up the walls had been scrounged for reuse farther on and some dirt had slipped down, making the footing treacherous.  Emily’s shoes slipped in the mud and she fell.  The soldier dragged her a few feet, careless of how the rubble ripped up her legs before he jerked her back up with a ‘walk yourself, bitch.’

She said nothing.  She had learned how to be silent.  She had learned how not to look, even when she was desperate.  She was desperate to look at the nun.  Would she be triumphant?  Had this been a trap?  The most important papers were plastered to her skin around her midsection, her sweat moistening them, hopefully not blurring the writing.  But this wet, at least, they wouldn’t crinkle to the touch.  The soldier kept his hand on her collar and bound wrists, so possibly they wouldn’t be found until they searched her, or until they tried to rape her.

The soldiers led the way through a communication trench into an active trench.  The soldiers there looked at them, some called out questions, too loudly for this to be the front-line trench.  They weren’t on guard, some dealing with supplies, carrying sandbags.  Emma had been trailing behind a little ways before, but here she moved up, merging with the group of soldiers who pulled the spy along.  It was almost a comfort.  Emily had been sure she would run, but now being exposed was worse.  It couldn’t be a real comfort though.  Another person was a variable you could never predict, and a person who knew about you…  But Emily knew about her too.  There was no way to guess what would happen next, only that there was no way to avoid it.

The patrol brought them to a dugout room.  The leader knocked, but it was abandoned.  He pushed in.  A rough table with a radio, a few trunks of equipment and supplies, and a wooden palisade, a few feet away from the dirt wall, a door in it, with a tiny barred window to serve as a cell.  There was only one exit from cramped low-ceilinged hollow, and three soldiers served as a solid barricade.

Emily was shoved inside the cell and she dropped to her knees on the dirty straw.  Fuck.

 

xXx

 

Soldiers everywhere.  Emma could smell them, the sour male scent, on their skin and in their clothes.  It smelled like piss and shit and fear.  She wanted to vomit, but she forced herself to stand casually, leaning against the table near the suitcase, her eyes on the woman in the cage.  She was afraid, it was clear in the lines of her shoulders, hunched up like wings folded on her back, and in the taut flex of her fingers, digging into the dirty straw.  She was probably afraid that Emma had done this on purpose, had lured her here and turned her in, but the last thing she would have done was come anywhere near these soldiers on purpose. 

The leader of the crew had scowled at the empty command dugout and said he’d go look for the captain, leaving the bearded man in charge.

“Isn’t it time you get back to your CO?” the bearded one asked Emma.  “You’ll be in deep shit for not getting back in time.”

She could leave.  She could walk right out of this camp, hit the woods, and be back at the ruined convent by morning.  The spy would be searched and shot in the head, and it would be nothing to her.  It would be better than staying here, waiting to be found out.  “Fuck off.  I’m waiting for the captain.  I’m not letting you take the credit for my spy.”

“You’re a pretty boy, aren't you?  Pity about your face.” said the other soldier, a blonde boy who looked hardly older than Robert.  Emma scowled at him.

“Pretty?”

“I haven’t seen you before, but I remember pretty boys.”  He grinned.  “All that talk about picking up a whore, I don’t think you’ve ever had a woman.”

“Fuck you.”

The spy was watching her, her eyes flat, as if she knew Emma was in trouble, but didn’t care, not unless it hurt her chances of getting those papers through.  She was hard, and analytical, and the woman at the graveside, who had seen her tears and spoke the words she couldn’t say, that she could only feel, was gone.

“You get your fuck with her?” the bearded soldier asked, tipping his head towards the cell.  “Doubt it.  You even got a dick, pretty boy?”

He reached out, and Emma hit his hand away.  Her fingers twisted, reaching towards her knife, but two on one was bad odds.  “What?  You want to suck it?”

He laughed.  “I’d rather have her.”  His eyes settled hungrily on Emily, and Emma grimaced.  Not again.  She didn’t want to have to watch it.  The thought of it was like a wire snare catching her gut, drawing taut and twisting it into an ugly shape.  She knew enough, and this woman was stupid enough to fight, stupid enough to yell until they choked her, until they beat her silent, smashed her jaw, cut off her air until her eyes rolled back and her face went red, then cold and blue.  She could stand her and watch her die.

“Why not?” asked the blond.  Their superior had taken off to find the captain, they were just… guarding.  Who cared what accidents happened while they were guarding?

The bearded soldier smiled.  “Why not?”

“She’s my whore!” Emma spat.

“You saying no?”

“I’m saying I get first dibs!”  She swallowed hard.  That had been a mistake.  If they knew that she was no soldier boy, then they wouldn’t have to take turns anymore.

The blond soldier laughed.  “Trying to be a man, pretty boy?  I’d like to see that.”

“Me too.”  The bearded soldier jerked open the door to the cell.  There was no lock on it, just a latch that could only be opened from the outside.  “Fuck her.”

“Isn’t one of you going to guard?”

“Don’t worry.  We won’t let you get in trouble if the captain comes back.”  The soldier laughed, and Emma didn’t trust him an inch.  The blond shoved her, and she stumbled across the threshold, knocking into the spy, who flinched away, a wild look in her eyes.

“Assholes!”

Emma caught her balance as the bearded soldier slammed the door.  The two faces peering in the window smirked.  “Come on, you fuck her and we won’t fuck you.  We’ll just take turns.”

Panicked, Emma turned and looked at the woman in the same cell.

The spy was on her knees, leaning a little forward, her eyes intent.  There was something unfamiliar in her face, a lie perhaps?  Her shirt was open enough to display deep cleavage, and when Emma took a hesitant step forward she smiled.  It was a long lazy smile, making use of her generous mouth, given by Satan himself to tempt foolish mortals into sin.  “Come on, little boy.  I’ll give you a first time you’ll never forget.”

One of the soldiers behind him laughed.  “Are you sure she’s not just a whore?  Did she tell you she’d sell you Spanish secrets?  I think that’s something to do with her tongue.”

The spy, her hands bound behind her, nuzzled her face into her hips.  “Mmm, not that big, are you dear?”

The two soldiers fell over themselves laughing.

“Big enough,” Emma said stiffly. 

Emily rose up her body, taking advantage of the laughter to whisper just loud enough to hear.  “Don’t worry.  I’ve been with whores before.  If you hump like a desperate little boy, I can play the part.”

She’d been with whores.  Emma half jerked back when she realized what that meant.  Emily just nipped fakely at her crotch and gave her a smug smile.

“Come on, pretty boy!” a soldier shouted.  “Let’s see that big cock!”

Emily was nuzzling against her again, and Emma’s breaths were coming shorter.  There was fear, but her touch, her poisoned sinful touch, on her hips and belly, felt like flame. 

“Slut.”

Emma caught her shoulders and shoved her away.  Emily caught her forearm, drawing her down on top of her.  Their legs entangled, Emma on one knee, hovering over her as the spy lifted up her chest, pressing her breasts towards her face.

“Undo them,” she hissed, and Emma obeyed, opening her shirt, and pressing her face into the warm sweaty valley, her hands cupping her breasts.  She rolled her hips, because she wanted to, because she ought to.  If she could pretend, they might not be able to see well enough to tell the difference.  Thank God for the tiny barred aperture in the door, she thought.  She hadn’t thanked Him in a long time, but she needed help for this.

Keeping her hips canted away from the door, Emma sat back between the spy’s legs, shuffling up her skirt with shaking hands, tugging down her underwear.  And Emily let her, a slight grit of teeth, an arch of her hips, and there was something dark in her eyes, as if she was standing outside herself, watching this happen, knowing that it was smart, it was strategic, it was nothing.  Emma fumbled with the front of her own trousers, palming herself, grimacing, teeth bared, pretending as best she could.  She tipped her head back, making a face, and the soldiers laughed.

“Too hard?  Harder than you can take?”

She planted her hands on the straw, one on each side of Emily’s shoulders, and carefully settled their hips together.  Emily stared at her, expression unreadable, eyes wider than expected.  Short-quick-controlled breaths: the tokens of fear?  Then, seemingly unconsciously, the spy licked her lips, leaving the cracked skin glistening.  Emma couldn’t move, transfixed by dark eyes, unfeeling ones.  And then, with a slight twitch of her hips and shoulders, almost imperceptible, the spy flinched.  Her mouth, lips slightly parted, was drawn down at the corners, taut, speaking a silent sound.  Emma breathed.

“Come on, big boy.”  The spy’s voice sounded like it was coming through a long rusty pipe, shuddery and echoing in her brain.  “Grind down on me.”

Balanced on her hands, Emma slowly rolled her hips into her.  She had seen it done, seen it done from underneath, stared up, clutching the sheets, wrists bruised, each thrust like someone had taken a cricket bat to her stomach.  She knew the grunting and the pounding she would have to mimic.  She had nearly stood and watched while it was done to the woman beneath her.  She knew she would have watched.  She would have owed her that at least, for doing nothing to help.  And she would watch again, if she faked it well enough, and if she didn’t, she’d feel it once more, twice more than she ever wanted to.

Their hips met and Emily’s body arched.  Her breath caught in her throat, and she struggled against the bindings on her wrists.  “Don’t tease me,” she hissed, too quiet for the soldiers to hear.  “I want to grab your ass and force you against me.”  Emma’s eyes widened, she stopped, not processing this, but Emily jerked up, her lips brushing her cheek as she spoke.  “You fuck me or we both die.”

The ‘or’ wasn’t guaranteed.

“You want it?”  And that was a question she shouldn’t have asked.  She didn’t need to know the answer.  It wasn’t important, not here, not now.  But ugly feelings burned in her chest, and she levered herself down, trapping the spy against the floor, crushing and keeping her caught.

“I want a lot of things,” Emily growled.  “But I’ll take you.”

Emma gave a wicked lurch with her hips, and the spy groaned.  She ground herself against her, the noises involuntary, Emily’s breath hot on her face.  She wanted to bite her, take the soft flesh of her lips between her teeth and mar it, devour it.  But the shouts of the men outside the cell kept her focused on her business.

Emily was whimpering, her face strained and pathetic, and Emma wondered how good of an actress she was, very good, if she was any judge.  And how was she going to finish this?  She would take as long as she could.  Maybe they would get bored and go away?  It was a futile hope.

Emily wailed, and Emma pressed her hand against her throat, choking her.  “Shut up, bitch.  You hoping a spy-plane will hear you?  You want to rat us out to the cocksuckers?”

The spy canted her hips up, her knee pressing in between Emma’s legs, and Emma cringed back, cursing the shudder that overwhelmed her.

The scream of an alarm overwhelmed the tent.

“It’s a gas attack!  Hurry!”  The two soldiers tumbled out of the dugout, fumbling for their gas masks.

They were gone.

Emma scrambled up, jerking the spy to her feet, pulling out her knife and slicing the knots that bound her wrists.  Emily was looking over her shoulder and Emma caught her eye, just once.  There was something in it, something unrecognizable and savage.  Was it lust?  How could she know?

“We have to go.”  Emma shoved at the door.  The soldiers hadn’t latched it, so it opened.  Her eyes fell on an open trunk, full of grenades.  She scooped up some.  Emily grabbed her suitcase, and opened the door, peering out into the trench.  It was black and hurrying figures didn’t even look towards them.  Occasional bursts of red fire illuminated the sky over the tops of the trenches.  Emma threw an abandoned soldier’s jacket at her, and she pulled it on.  Then they ran, out of the dugout, dodging past masked soldiers and ducking out the passage to the reserve trench.  A broken wall provided an mountable slope and they scrambled up.  Emily’s useless shoes slipped, but a hard grip caught her wrist before she slid to the bottom, and Emma pulled until she managed to reach the top.

There was a moment there, with Emily looking at her, looking confused, face lit by red fire like a bloody sunset, and Emma couldn’t meet her eyes.  She pulled a pin from one of the grenades and threw it as far as she could.  It hit the reserve trench and blew up in a shattering explosion.  A wall collapsed and shouts rose from the trench they had just fled.  Emily took one and hurled it, the flares and smoke and debris scattered out, stinging and blinding them.

Then they ran again, through the forest, stumbling through bushes, scrambling up and down the steep mountain slopes, running and panting and desperate, and free.

 

xXx

 

It had been miles, and Emily’s chest felt like it was about to explode.  The dirt and smoke from the trenches and the explosions coated her skin, so stiff, it was like it had been fired in a kiln.  She took a step, and slipped, falling, tumbling into a muddy ditch, the suitcase flying from her hand to land with a squelch.

Emma dropped down into the ditch as well, landing lightly in her soldier boots and looked around.  Explosions roared from far off, but there was nothing nearby, no pursuit, no scent of poison gas.  Moonlight lit the spire of the church, only a mile or so away.  They had nearly reached the town.

Emily felt herself be overwhelmed by laughter, and she laughed and laughed hysterically.  They had gone so far and suffered so much, and they were back where they had started.  “Oh lord, we were so close.”  So close?  So close to dying and having her papers fall to the Germans, and so far from anything resembling success, and yet it felt like a victory.

And she hadn’t been tricked or trapped.  Emma had risked everything, and still held out a hand to keep her alive.  It didn’t make sense.  There was no one, no one at all, who would have done that for her before.  Everyone in her life had been loyal or noble, or desperate and venal, but none of them would have looked back and kept her from slipping down into that trench again.

They had nearly died so many times.  She had played the slut, played it so well that it had felt real.  But how could it not be?  Emma’s eyes were wide, innocent in a killer’s face, and she had ground against her.  Emily had wanted it, wanted to be held down and fucked by a person who knew her sins, who could give her absolution, if not in confession then in heat and sex and pain.  She looked at her, at her face, pale with moonlight.  It was wrong that way.  It was meant to be lit, as it had been a moment ago, with the fire of bombs, laughing, vicious and terrible in its vengeance, like Michael, with a fiery sword.

Emma was looking at her, a little stunned, but more intent, more desperate, and then she was reaching out.  She caught Emily’s collar and jerked her in.  She kissed hard, and Emily melted against her.  This nun kissed like fire.  “Oh God,” she murmured against Emma’s mouth.  She reached up, threading her fingers through her hair.  “Forgive me this.”

She slid her body forward to press against Emma’s.  Emma closed her hands around her waist, keeping her near and captive.  Her fingers slipped between her legs, sliding up the inside of her thigh.

“I can only hurt you,” Emily murmured, not wanting her to stop, not wanting to do anything but spread her legs and push her hips into her hand.

“You can shut up.”  And Emma’s fingers were inside of her, deep and foreign and so, so necessary.  Emily arched into her, caught her head, and merged the heat of their mouths.

Emily had forgotten what it was like not to lie.  She could lie with her body as well as her tongue, lie with her eyes and lips and hands.  Sex was always lying, a jumble of bravado and terror and heavily rehearsed lines.  But this was too sloppy, too wet and unrehearsed to be a lie.  They were tangled like Dante’s lovers, half merged with the earth, half merged with each other.  She clung to the dull bloodstained soldier’s uniform.  The body inside was narrow and rough, more bone than flesh, like some sort of monster, nothing soft but the hot wet tongue in her mouth.  She tore at the buttons, opening up the coat, tugging up the shirt, her hands sliding up the demon’s sweat-slick back, finding the bend in her waist, the smooth, feminine line of it, hauling her close, wrapping her legs around her hips, which jerked involuntarily, and being fucked, hard fingers and juddering, boyishly lustful thrusts, squelching deep into the mud with every stroke, and groaning like an engine raising steam.

It hurt when she came, it hurt like burning, and Emma was hovering over her, panting, face and hair as pale as marble in the moonlight.  Emily just stared up, a hot bead of sweat dripping down and landing on her cheek, her skin growing chill in the night air.  She slid her hand over the woman’s hollow belly, dipping under the waist of the tight-cinched soldier’s trousers.  The nun flinched back, pulling away from her to drop into the mud as she buttoned up her shirt and coat.

Emily sat up.  “You don’t-”

“I’m not interested in having you touch me.”

Emily’s lip curled.  “You think that’s worth anything?  Are you going to tell me I’m a sinner now?  Tell me I’m disgusting?  Come on.  Do it.  You’re a hypocrite-”

Emma slapped her.  The sting of her wet fingers flamed on her cheek, warming it. “I’m not going to lie down and spread my legs for you or anyone.  You won’t put a gun to my head to make me, and even then, I’d rather be shot.”

“Oh.”

“It’s none of your concern.”

Emily looked at her.  “No,” she said.  “It’s not.”